Flash Catalyst Beta is Live

Flash Catalyst, Adobe’s new visual interface design tool, has reached Beta 1 and is available to the public!

Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding. With Catalyst, you can:

Transform artwork created in Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® into functional user interfaces.

Create interactive prototypes with the ability to leverage them in the final product

Publish a finished project as a SWF file ready for distribution

Work more efficiently with developers who use Adobe Flash Builder™ 4 to create rich Internet applications (RIAs). Designers use Flash Catalyst to create the functional user experience then provide the project file to developers who use Flash Builder to add functionality and integrate with servers and services.

I’ve been working with the tool for a while now and I think it’s awesome. Designers, as well as the developers who work with them, will really appreciate the workflow that Catalyst enables. Designers don’t need to learn code, and developers don’t need to recreate designs in code.

Here are some of the resources that are available for the Beta 1 release: